Stable, robust and off-the-shelf methods for graphics recognition

We claim that time has come in graphics recognition for choosing stable and robust methods, even (or especially) when this means implementing methods proposed by others, instead of inventing a new algorithm which ends up being a minor variation on an old idea. In this spirit, we present some of the choices we have made. We do not cover the whole range of methods and steps used in graphics recognition, but rather concentrate on those which we deem the most crucial and time consuming, in terms of development time, in the design of a graphics recognition system. They include: binarization, text-graphics segmentation, thin-thick separation, vectorisation and arc recognition, and tiling